Geek Culture’s 26 Most Awesome Female Ass-Kickers

Angelina Jolie extends her reputation as filmdom’s most compelling ass-kicker, Female Division, when Salt opens Friday. Midway through a summer freighted with testosterone, Jolie’s lithe Agent Salt is a potent reminder of the power of feminine fighters.

A minority presence in sci-fi and action realms even in 2010, women warriors remain the exception to the guy-centric rule in film, TV, videogames and comic books. But that’s changing, according to Action Flick Chick blogger Katrina Hill, who moderates the "Where Are the Action Chicks?" panel Friday at San Diego’s Comic-Con International.

"Compare the original Predator to this summer’s Predators," she said in an e-mail interview with Wired.com. "The original film was a complete boy’s club, with the only woman in the movie being a hostage. Today, Predators has a kick-ass chick mixed in as an equal amongst these other badass men. So there are steps being taken in the right direction. It just takes time."

Starbuck

Katee Sackhoff gender-switched the Battlestar Galactica character played by Dirk Benedict for the original TV series. When BSG rebooted in 2003, Sackhoff quickly overcame skeptics with her tomboy take on Kara “Starbuck” Thrace. The actress took flight as a tough, smart, complicated pilot able to kick ass and soul search with equal conviction.

Red Sonja

Introduced in Marvel Comics' Conan the Barbarian, swords-and-sorcery hellion Red Sonja got incarnated on screen in 1985 by great Dane Brigitte Nielsen. More recently, filmmaker Robert Rodriguez produced concept art picturing his girlfriend Rose McGowan as the chain-mailed warrior in a movie slated for 2011.

Jack, aka ‘Subject Zero’

Witchblade

Megan Fox grew up idolizing Top Cow's tough chick Witchblade, portrayed on TV by Yancy Butler. Especially popular in Japan in manga and anime form, Witchblade comics have sold more than 100 million copies worldwide since 1995. Top Cow Productions is developing a motion picture about the woman gifted with a supernaturally high-powered glove.

Xena

Statuesque New Zealand actress Lucy Lawless filled out Xena’s tight skirts and leather vests with brawn and brains. The character first appeared in the 1995 to 1999 television series Hercules: The Legendary Journeys before getting her own TV show. Making no apologies for Xena’s rib-cracking approach to problem-solving, Lawless remains a force to be reckoned with in Starz’s blood-and-sex-drenched Spartacus series.

Tank Girl

Birthed by Deadline magazine, this antisocial teenager harbored a fondness for machine guns and mutant kangaroos on the printed page before Lori Petty brought the character to life in 1995’s Tank Girl film.

Lara Croft

Videogame heroine Lara Craft became a pop-culture sensation when Angelina Jolie took on the character for one good Tomb Raider movie and a so-so sequel. Jolie won't be back for more, but producers aim to reboot the film franchise once they find the right actress. How about Michelle Rodriguez?

Cassie Hack

The star of Devil’s Due Publishing’s Hack/Slash graphic novel series, avenging feminist Cassie Hack takes sex ‘n’ violence for a wild ride aimed at ruining the lives of abusive creeps. Hollywood studios are currently circling a script that would propel Cassie to the big screen.

Ripley

Sigourney Weaver smoked, snarled and ripped the guts out of alien interlopers in the first three Alien movies. A feminist sci-fi icon, Ripley effectively upended the eye-candy apple cart for years to come.

Alice

Milla Jovovich cranked up her survivalist adrenaline for three gun-toting film adventures based on the Resident Evil videogames.

Mystique

Marvel Comics’ X-Men series features a bevy of strong female mutants, but in 2004’s X-2 movie, Rebecca Romijn’s portrayal of blue baddie Mystique gave form to what is arguably the greatest supervillain costume ever devised.

Catwoman

When it comes to campy superheroines, Michelle Pfeiffer set the bar high when she cracked whips as Catwoman in 1992’s Batman Returns.

Black Widow

She’s a prim legal secretary. No, wait, she’s a martial arts expert! In Iron Man 2, Scarlett Johansson played both sides of her Marvel Comics character, posing as buttoned-down Avengers spy Natalie Rushman before switching personae to beat up corporate thugs in a third act.

Neytiri

It could have gone so terribly, cheesily wrong, but Zoe Saldana’s performance as the alien Na’vi princess stole the show in James Cameron’s sci-fi blockbuster Avatar. Sensuous and fierce, the nature-loving Neytiri provided 3-D cinema with its first three-dimensional character.

Buffy

Introduced in the 1992 film Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Buffy Summers took off as a pop-culture phenomenon when Sarah Michelle Gellar reinvented the high-school adventuress for Joss Whedon’s 1997 to 2003 Buffy TV series. Long before True Blood and Twilight came calling, Buffy tapped an appetite for wit, sex and action.

Hit Girl

In the Kick-Ass movie, 11-year-old Chloe Grace Moretz ripped into her performance as a potty-mouthed superhero with enthusiasm rarely found in grown-up actors. For those who weren’t offended by the pre-adolescent blood-letting, Hit Girl proved that you’re never too young or too girly to dismember bad guys.

Lisbeth Salander

This surly bisexual hacker, equally adept at combating corporate conspiracies and tattooing “I am a pig” on the bellies of abusive men, earned worldwide renown through the trilogy of novels by Stieg Larsson and a Swedish film franchise starring Noomi Rapace. Now American actresses are drooling for the chance to play rough as Hollywood preps an English-language version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Natalie Portman, anyone?

Elektra

Jennifer Garner, one of Hollywood’s most athletic actresses, played Marvel Comics’ Elektra Natchios in a 2005 movie. Although the film failed to catch fire with audiences, Garner at least accomplished the rare feat of snagging top billing in a superhero movie.

River Tam

In Joss Whedon’s space Western TV series Firefly and its big-screen sequel Serenity, Summer Glau attracted a cult following for the character that lives on in comic-book incarnations.

Sydney Bristow

In J.J. Abrams’ TV show Alias, Jennifer Garner pulled off high-octane action stunts on a weekly basis as she portrayed superspy Sydney Bristow.

Kate Austen

On Lost, Evangeline Lilly brought a wary edge to her cagy Kate character. Sure, she blew up her dad’s house back in the states and usually packed heat, but Kate had a tender side that drove the island’s alpha males wild.

Aeon Flux

MTV’s 1991 Aeon Flux cartoon morphed into a big-budget action vehicle for Charlize Theron, who took on the wiry heroine after winning her Best Actress Oscar. Plagued by on-set accidents, Aeon Flux fizzled commercially, but at least the filmmakers took a stab at casting an A-list actress smack in the middle of the action.

Anna

The best sci-fi villain currently on TV, alien leader Anna, portrayed by Morena Baccarin on ABC’s V series, is ruthless as a reptile beneath her creamy-smooth exterior.

Seven of Nine

As Star Trek: Voyager character Seven of Nine, Jeri Ryan deserves a special mention for becoming the biggest fanboy superstar of her generation. She set the stage for sci-fi sex symbols like Tricia Helfer’s Number Six in Battlestar Galactica and Alessandra Torresani in Caprica.

Blowback: Who’s Your Favorite Female Ass-Kicker?

And that’s just for starters. There’s also Jessica Alba’s tough Dark Angel TV chick, filmed years before the actress took on Invisible Woman in the Fantastic Four films; The Bride, played by Uma Thurman in Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill movies; Halle Berry’s X-Men character; La Femme Nikita, ramping up for a prime-time reboot; and Marvel Comics’ Patsy “Hellcat” Walker.